Combustion Engine Works the Development of Engines

¶ … Combustion Engine Works The development of engines and other machineries revolutionized industrialization particularly in the area of transportation whereby the transport of raw materials, finished products and people made possible increased efficiency in the overall production and manufacturing processes. Transportation has been a major beneficiary predominantly with the invention of smaller combustion engines that powered various vehicles. Gottlieb Daimler is attributed with the invention of the first combustion engine during the late 1800s.

He "constructed what is generally recognized as the prototype of the modern gas engine: small and fast, with a vertical cylinder, it used gasoline injected through a carburetor (Morris Motor Company 2011)." From this prototype, several combustion engines have been developed and Daimler even improved his engine prototype by introducing "in 1889 a four-stroke engine with mushroom-shaped valves and two cylinders arranged in a V, having a much higher power-to-weight ratio; all modern gasoline engines are descended from Daimler's engines (Morris Motor Company 2011)." Combustion engines are basically mechanical and thermal devices that that use the chemical energy of fuels, usually through burning hence the term combustion, to produce kinetic energy.

When the fuels burn or combust, various activities are set in motion where different parts of the machine or engine move and produce the outputs based on the roles played by each engine component. For instance, the crankshaft sets the linear piston into rotation while the piston exerts force on the fuel inside the cylinders (Armstrong Auto Center, Inc. 2010)." When talking about combustion engines though, there are two main differentiations: external and internal combustion engines.

The former is where fuel is burned outside the engine such as a steam engine while and the internal combustion engine burns fuel inside the engine. Discussions on this paper center on internal combustion engines particularly the four-stroke engine first developed by Gottlieb Daimler. To understand in depth the workings of an internal combustion engine, it is critical to know the parts or components that make up this machinery particularly the four-stroke engine.

At its basic though, "once the gasoline and the oxygen are in the same place, a combustion chamber called the 'cylinder', the goal is to get them to react (burn) as quickly and as efficiently as possible. To do that, the mixture is put under intense heat and pressure by rotating pistons (more about them later) (Wesley 2007. For a more detailed look at how the engine works, familiarity with the parts should be done first.

Aside from the crankshaft and piston introduced earlier, other components and their functions are (Armstrong Auto Center, Inc. 2010): Camshaft -- opens the valves once every two times the crankshaft rotates.

Valves or poppet valves -- control the flow of fuel Cylinder -- where the piston travels Spark plug -- ignites the compressed fuel Crank -- bent part of the shaft that changes motion from reciprocating (back and forth or up and down) to circular, or vice versa; the motion leads to pushing the piston down, pushing the crankshaft round, and setting the wheels of the vehicle in motion Although each component of a combustion engine is critical to the overall performance and output of the engine, the piston takes the lion's share of the work since it undergoes several activities that enable the completion of energy conversion cycle from chemical energy to heat energy and finally, mechanical or kinetic energy.

The following are the various strokes that the piston undergoes to enable energy conversion and ensure the internal combustion engine moves the vehicle or machinery it is attached to (Ignition UK 2009; Morris Motor Company 2011): Intake Stroke -- The piston starts at the top, the intake port opens, and the piston moves down to let the engine take in a cylinder-full of air and gasoline. Only the tiniest drop of gasoline needs to be mixed into the air for this to work.

Compression Stroke -- Then the piston moves back up to compress this fuel/air mixture. The compression stroke makes the explosion more powerful. Power Stroke -- When the piston reaches the top of its stroke, the spark plug emits a spark to ignite the gasoline. The gasoline charge in the cylinder explodes, driving the piston down. Exhaust Stroke -- Once the piston hits the bottom of its stroke, the exhaust valve opens and the exhaust leaves the cylinder to go out the tail pipe.

Under normal and optimum circumstances, the internal combustion engine cycle described above goes through a continuing motion and stops when there is no more fuel feeding into the combustion engine. Aside from the lack of fuel, there are other circumstances that may cause internal combustion engines to fail or function below average. With several metallic parts that are linked or combined together, lubrication is.